Memoir

September 25, 2017

Greetings from the recollection,

“Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.”
Saul Bellow

Regular people don’t write their memoirs.   Typically, this is the realm of the famous, infamous and the notorious.  The kind of people that somebody else might be interested in, whose stories have drama and conflict and a literal arc.  Not us.  Other people. 

I’m going to use the word memoir here because I like the sound of it, and any sticklers out there who want to correct me please do so silently.  Memoir sounds so much more romantic and exotic than ‘autobiography’, which sounds like it writes itself.  Or it’s about cars.

Writers describe a memoir as an account of someone’s life during a specific time, often in relation to some event or some person that the reader might care about. There are other attributes, but among them is that they are supposed to be true.  Like most truth, open for interpretation.

You might think that there is some burden in telling others about your life.  What to leave out?  What to include that might be interesting?  One challenge is that you can’t tell the juiciest parts because some people are still alive to be embarrassed about them.  I mean, I assume that’s the case.

I am lucky to know a lot of people whose lives would make for good reading.  Writers and missionaries and Navy Seals and mothers-in-law and musicians and teachers and hoboes.  As far as I know the only reason they haven’t written their memoirs is what I wrote in the first paragraph.  You don’t have to go back and look, it was this: Regular people don’t write their memoirs.

Regular people look at their life in the same way we all do and assume that no one would have any interest in hearing their story.  Regular people think that what they do with their days is uninspired or unheroic or unremarkable and that no one would care.   That is the reason I’m writing these words today is to tell them they are wrong. 

For many of us, the fascinating things happen in random swirls, some moments here, some days there, and in between there are decades of folding fitted sheets and balancing the checkbook and pulling weeds and commuting to places where we do repetitive things that seem bland and dull to us. 

And maybe the mundane sands off the edges of the remarkable and we stop thinking of our lives included in a scintillating memoir.  Along with that we lose perspective; we don’t realize that superheroes drive MomVans and separate the recycling and fill the copy paper and hammer the nail.  We don’t realize that our stories are important to the fabric of the world we are in.

I remember my Grandpa used to keep a journal; that sounds more impressive than it was.  He carried a small spiral notebook and evidently when something prompted him he wrote in it.

What I want to tell you is that in those notebooks there was amazing stories about his adventures.  He ranged over the plains of Canada before it was civilized, was wounded in WWI, moved to the U.S., raised a family, survived the Depression, chased down a robber, taught his grandchildren to fish.  A million other stories that would either make you smile or shake your head, some of  which might even be true.  He had a lust for life.  He was a character.

But what he wrote in his journal was the weather conditions.  It’s not all he wrote but that’s the kind of thing he put down.  Here’s what happened today.  The mail came.  It rained.  Someone drove out from the city to visit.

He was not the kind of man who was going to put down his history for the next generations to know.  I believe he felt his life was no more remarkable than that of a million other emigrants who had survived what he had.  But his memoir is not lost.   We are his biography.  The people who knew him or heard his stories. 

On more than a few occasions I have been in the company of heroes and geniuses and saints all disguised as regular people, until I heard them tell a story about their life.  Then I realized what a difference it made. 

When we hear about the experiences of others it broadens our perspective.  It makes us more tolerant, more forgiving, more hopeful.  Sometimes this open door to another’s life brings friendship or love. 

Some of you regular people are still wondering if any of this applies to you and so this is your last chance.  Yes it does.  I recognize not everyone is has the skills or the desire to craft the words that would best describe the adventure of their lives.  But there are other ways to share your stories.  Over a cup of coffee with a friend.  Sitting at a bedside.  On a road trip.

Your life is filled with small moments and dramatic victories and crushing heartbreak and those form much of who you are.  Think of the times you knew were life changing, of the events that defined you, shaped your direction.  Think of the simple moments that became the best part of your day.

There was this time that I thought I was going to die...  The day I met my best friend...   I thought   my heart was broken…  The only thing I thought would make me happy…  I never wanted children until….  The funniest thing in my life happened on my wedding day…

Tell your friends and your children and your grandchildren.  Testify in church.  Go to a Moth event.  Find a StoryCorps studio.  Be willing to share your life in some way with someone and encourage them to share with you.  You will be surprised what a difference it can make. What you have to know is that your story matters to us.  You have to tell it so we can know it and tell it to others.   It makes all our lives richer.

Hope this finds you irregular ,

David

Copyright © 2017 David Smith